An Enlightened Educational Idealist: Wilhelm von Humboldt

Language is a tool that helps a person carry out their daily activities, emphasizes their character, and reflects their mindset. It is a way of emphasizing a person's culture and individuality.

Language is deeply intertwined with humanity's intellectual development. It is the manifesto of the human brain.

The above 2 paragraphs are by Wilhelm von Humboldt.

Wilhelm von Humboldt was the founder of Humboldt University in Berlin. The university was renamed Humboldt University in 1949 in memory of him and his brother, the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) .

Wilhelm von Humboldt was born in Potsdam in 1767 and died in Tegel in 1835 at the age of 68. He was a linguist, philosopher, diplomat and an educational reformer.

After losing his father in 1779, he and his brother received a good education due to the great importance given to education by his protestant mother Elisabeth von Holwede, who came from the Hügno Family of France. With the advantage of coming from the bourgeoisie, he did not experience any financial difficulties during his education and throughout his life. He could focus on his research, reading, and writing without financial worries.

Wilhelm von Humboldt was heavily influenced by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) through his private training with Alexander von Humboldt. Kant shaped Humboldt's perspectives in all areas of his work.

Wilhelm von Humboldt became a well-known name in literature in the late 1790s. He was a diplomat representing Prussia in Rome between 1801 and 1808. In 1809, he went to Berlin to take up a position in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. He was responsible for religious affairs and education. The period that would make him a part of world and German educational history began with his appointment to Berlin.

Humboldt thinks that basic education aimed at gaining critical thinking skills is much more important than education aimed at providing only a profession. Knowledge is power, education is freedom. Humboldt's ideal of education is to create educated and self-confident citizens . Regardless of the classes and families they come from!

In order to understand Wilhelm von Humboldt's educational reform, it is necessary to focus to a certain extent on Prussian history and the human relations that contributed to the formation of Wilhelm von Humboldt's educational philosophy.

King Frederick II of Prussia (1712-1786) is known as Frederick the Great. He ruled Prussia from 1740-1786. His reign ended with his death when Wilhelm von Humboldt was only 9 years old. However, it was the reign of Frederick II that prepared the political ground for Humboldt's educational reform.

Frederick the Great wanted to unite Prussia and make it a powerful state. In order to achieve this goal, he wanted the state to determine policies in accordance with the "principles of the enlightenment philosophy" . This ideal, put forward by Frederick the Great on the political platform, paved the political path that allowed Humboldt to carry out the educational reform.

Who is Kant? He is the person who wrote the article “What is Naming?” He is one of the representatives of the Enlightenment philosophy. Humboldt received an education under the influence of Kant. Frederick the Great laid the foundations of the Enlightenment dream for Prussia. Humboldt, who took the roots of his philosophy from Kant and found the political ground for reform in the understanding coming from the period of Frederick the Great, had the opportunity to put into practice what was on his mind.

Education in Prussia is based on antiquated methods. The curriculum is inflexible and girls have very limited access to education. Religion and state are not separate.

Napoleon is terrorizing Europe. Prussia, defeated in the Battle of Jena, has been under French occupation since 1806. Napoleon demands heavy reparations from Prussia. He wants the people to surrender all their jewelry, precious metals and objects made of precious metals, down to teaspoons, to the mint. In return, the people will be given worthless paper money. The Prussian people are struggling to survive in extremely difficult conditions.

Prussia, under the reign of Frederick William III (1770-1840), needed political and military reforms. Frederick William III ruled Prussia from 1797-1840. Wilhelm von Humboldt's educational work coincided with this period.

Wilhelm von Humboldt, who went to Berlin in 1809, focused on studies on languages from 1799 onwards. He made his first publication in 1787. He discussed Xenophon's writings on Socrates and Plato. The aim was for these works to be used in Prussian schools.

He goes to Paris in 1789. He makes observations. In 1792, he explains his views on the new French constitution. He criticizes that the constitution was created only on the basis of logical thought and reason. The title of Kant's 1781 work is also "The Critique of Pure Reason" . The summary of the book is hidden in Kant's words: "the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me" . On one side of this statement are the findings of science (the starry heavens) and on the other side are the freedom of man (the moral law) .

Humboldt expressed his political views in his work "Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des States zu bestimmen/ The Limits of State Action" . Humboldt's views made important contributions to German liberalism. The work also inspired John Stuart Mill's (1806-1803) essay "On Liberty" published in 1859.

In Kant’s article titled “What is Enlightenment?”, maturation is mentioned. Maturation is when a person has “the intention and courage to learn and understand without the guidance of another.” In order to mature, one must be “free.” In other words, freedom is needed to intend to learn and understand. First freedom and then courage bring confidence .

The basis of Humboldt's educational ideal is to create Kant's mature people . Therefore, every obstacle standing in the way of freedom of thought makes enlightenment impossible . Every ideology, thought, belief that aims to restrict freedom of thought is an obstacle to enlightenment. The one who supports every attempt to restrict freedom of thought is unenlightened . Kant's article also makes references to religion and reveals that every individual should think and evaluate religion freely, without anyone's guidance .

Humboldt implemented a three-stage education system in Prussia. The main thing is this: he explained what the purpose and qualities of education at each stage would be. He saved Prussia from, in his words, “a disastrous educational pedagogy.”

Humboldt defined basic education, secondary education and university education. It would be a mistake to look at the subject under the titles of primary school, secondary school and university. Let's delve a little deeper into Humboldt's definitions and the qualities he tried to bring to education . Let's focus on Humboldt's educational methodology and his perspective on the development of the human brain.

Primary education was to teach a child to understand and express thoughts . The difficulty in describing something had to be overcome by reading and writing. Primary education was not education but preparation for education.

Second-degree education meant acquiring the ability to think . For this, it was necessary to use knowledge based on facts, and without knowledge based on facts, it was not possible to gain scientific development and ability.

Individuals who could collect the information materials needed to think and use creative power and who could filter the materials they collected through their intellectual power had to be created. The word intellectual here was used to mean the capacity to create knowledge within the framework of the logic and thinking ability that is open to development and that exists in every human being, regardless of class or social status. Thus, citizens who could learn and who learned to learn would emerge.

In secondary education, language, history and mathematics were of great importance. The teacher would try to ensure that the student would develop simultaneously in these three areas. It was also of great importance that teachers were trained to observe and make determinations about the simultaneous development of each student in these three areas. The student would graduate when he/she gained the ability to learn from others and to learn on his/her own .

An individual with a second-degree education can dare and intend to learn without anyone's guidance and support . He can fulfill the "sapere aude" guidance of Horace, which Kant referred to in his famous article. A person with a second-degree education, as defined by Humboldt, could be included in Kant's definition of a mature person.

A person who has received a second degree education is free . In other words, he can learn on his own, he is brave and confident . This person should not be subjected to vocational training while receiving basic and second degree education. A free, self-learning, confident and brave individual can pursue any profession.

When an individual with a second degree reaches university level, he is no longer a student. A university professor is no longer a teacher. An individual who has reached university is a researcher in the field he has chosen. A university professor guides and supports an individual at university level with his experiences in doing research. University education prepares the ground for an individual to grasp and advance scientific integrity and to demonstrate the ability to use the creativity he has learned at the second degree.

If we are to develop the ability to learn and reach the “starry heavens above us,” mature, confident individuals need freedom to use their creative talents.

Freedom of thought and academic autonomy are necessary to achieve universality , the “starry heavens above us” to which Kant refers when describing scientific findings.

There are other things in Kant's world beyond the a priori and a posteriori. To reach there and ensure the development of the brain, systematically learning art and music is as important as learning mathematics .

While implementing educational reform, Humboldt was among the founders of the University of Berlin in 1809. The name of the university was changed to Friedrich Wilhelm University in 1828 in honor of Friedrich Wilhelm III. Since 1949, it has been called Humboldt University in honor of the Humboldt brothers.

The foundation of the University of Berlin places Wilhelm von Humboldt in the position of the inventor of the modern research university. The University of Berlin created the most prestigious university structure model that inspired the structure of all western universities throughout the 19th century.

Wilhelm von Humboldt, while explaining and defining what students should gain through educational reform, also determines the qualifications that teachers who will revive this educational system should have and the criteria for becoming a teacher. A teacher should be able to use their thinking ability very clearly . They should have warmth in their emotional world . They should look at education from a broad perspective . They should be respectful to people. Their behavior towards those from lower classes should not differ from their behavior towards those from other classes.

Wilhelm von Humboldt retired in 1819 at the age of 52. He focused on the relationships between the forms and structures of many languages and the mentality of their speakers. He examined the relationships between language and culture through ethnolinguistic studies and made comparative studies between various languages.

Humboldt translated Aeschylus' Agamemnon into German between 1796 and 1816.

He went to the Basque Country in 1821. He wrote about the early settlers of Spain. In 1828, he published Über Den Dualis .

Between 1824 and 1826, he wrote a book on the languages of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Between 1827 and 1829, he focused on Sanskrit and the languages of the South Pacific. The process ended with a study of the Malay languages.

Humboldt occasionally contributes to other linguistic works, the most important of which is Johann Christoph Adelung's Mithridates . He makes corrections and additions to the Basque section of the book. Mithridates is a comprehensive comparison of various languages.

Some of Wilhelm von Humboldt's works were compiled and published after his death by his brother Alexander von Humboldt.

Wilhelm von Humboldt's greatest work, which he could not complete due to his death, was on the ancient Kawi language of Java. The remaining parts were combined and the work was published after his death by his brother Alexander von Humboldt together with J. Bushmann in 1836. The preface of the book includes another work by Wilhelm von Humboldt: "Über die Verschüdenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts (On Language: On the Diversity of Human Language Construction and its Influence on the Mental Development of the Human Species)" . The preface has been considered the most comprehensive work on linguistics ever written.

Humboldt associates the relevance of language to intellectual development with the learning of Latin and Greek. He thinks that both languages nourish each other.

In an article discussing Wilhelm von Humboldt, it is impossible not to mention Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) .

Wilhelm von Humboldt's wife Caroline von Humboldt (1766-1829) was a highly educated art historian and was friends with Friedrich Schiller's wife Charlotte von Lengefeld (1766-1826) . This friendship led to a friendship between Wilhelm von Humboldt and Friedrich Schiller. When the Schiller family moved to Jena, the Humboldts also moved to Jena. Wilhelm von Humboldt and Friedrich Schiller met regularly. Their correspondence was published in 1830. Humboldt's correspondence with Goethe was published in 1876.

Schiller began his professional career as a professor of philosophy at the University of Jena in 1789. The speech he gave at the university entrance on 26–27 May 1789 is a speech that has gone down in history. Other important speeches have also been published.

The Humboldt-Schiller meetings would shape the views of both to a great extent. On one side of this relationship, Goethe also made an important contribution. The article Humboldt wrote for Schiller in 1830 is also worth reading.

Before Humboldt reached Berlin, a decision was made to completely restructure the education system. Work began in line with the suggestions of the Swiss JH Pestalozzi (1746-1827) . Pastalozzi was one of the pioneers of modern primary education.

King Frederick William III gave Baron Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom Stein (1757-1831) extraordinary powers for educational reform. Prussia collapsed especially after the Battle of Jena. When the negative situation in education and the military defeat were evaluated, Karl vom Stein's reform ideas found a place within the framework of political will. Topics such as the emancipation of the peasants , the modernization and reorganization of the government administration , and the creation of a national army emerged as a development model for Prussia, including educational reform. He left the duties he undertook for some political reasons, but his ideas continued to live.

The understanding that Prussia tried to implement with its educational reform does not only have the characteristics of a “utilitarian approach” that allows students to sustain themselves financially . Education is a lifelong process.

Humboldt explained the educational reform with his plan called “Der Königsberger und der Litauische Schulplan / Guiding Ideas on a Plan for the Establishment of the Lithuanian Municipal School System (1809)” . Behind the reform plan, also known as “ Die Theorie der Bildung des Menschen ”, lies the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) .

Parallels to My Life Experiences from Wilhelm von Humboldt

I want to move on from Wilhelm von Humboldt's educational ideal to my personal experiences. I have gone through so many processes and experiences where Wilhelm von Humboldt was present that I have understood this in life.

Perhaps coincidences, or perhaps my teachers' willingness to share their knowledge and experience with me because of my interest in certain subjects, have given me experiences that I can describe as great luck in my life.

I want to go to my high school years, Kabataş Boys High School. Between 1985-1988. A person evaluates their past experiences differently after filtering them through their life experiences. Past experiences have a different value and meaning as they progress through the difficult roads of life. Realizing that value and meaning is life itself. Thinking about an experience ten times, one reaches a unity of thought distilled by distillation.

During my high school years, there were things that all of our teachers, without exception, told us. The one that I remember the most was, "We don't just tell you our own knowledge and what is written in books, we teach you how to learn ."

Turkish, English, German or any other language. We were listening to the mathematical cycle of learning any language, the contribution of literature to analytical thinking and the algebra and geometry it contains. These were embedded in our minds. I did not realize that I was learning mathematical abstraction in literature and music classes as much as in math, physics or chemistry classes.

In English classes, while trying to understand the phrase “see the mathematical construction in this sentence,” I was unaware that grammatical structure and analytical logic were congruent somewhere in my head.

I also remember the words, “Don’t get caught up in the notes, catch the rhythm” in music lessons. Rhythm is actually rhyme in literature. Rhyme is sounds, numbers, formulas that repeat each other. I didn’t realize that I was solving the mathematics of music in music lessons.

Learning how to learn, the relationship between language and intellectual development, and the fact that art contributes to the development of the brain as much as mathematics, physics and chemistry, are so compatible with Wilhelm von Humboldt's educational ideal that I have experienced this in real life.

I do readings with my American teacher Marvin E. Jones. We chat constantly. He speaks better Turkish than I do. His German is perfect. His French is intermediate. He teaches me Latin and Greek word roots and suffixes. We solve the mathematics of the language. When I learn English, I catch almost all the meanings of words I don't understand from the Latin and Greek roots and suffixes in the words. "Language is an endless adventure, a story," says Marvin. Today, I still try to guess the meanings of words I encounter for the first time using the same method. What I learned from Kabataş is combined with what I learned from Marvin.

There was a board in his room. Instead of keeping some of his notes in a notebook, he would temporarily write them on the board. I saw various formulas on the board. There was a formula like “xy2+ab3=I understand”. I thought he was studying mathematics. But why? What was the word next to it? I learned that he used mathematical equations and exponential expressions to explain Turkish words more easily to his students who were learning Turkish. He developed the method himself. I was in astonishment at that moment. I asked him if he could explain it to me. He did and I solved the formulas in a few minutes. By the way, I made up the formula above to explain what I saw on the board. I don’t remember the exact formula I saw; I forgot it. However, there were equations and exponential numbers similar to the one above.

As a teacher, Marvin had to address students from many countries around the world. He would sometimes say that he had one of the most complex jobs in the world. He placed great importance on establishing emotional closeness with each of his students. He believed that as his own empathy developed, his dialogues with students increased and he could convey information much better. He would spend hours reading about each student’s country and culture so that he could create a wealth of topics to talk about with them and appeal more to their emotional worlds. Wilhelm von Humboldt’s criterion that teachers should have warmth in their emotional worlds, does anything I have described above ring a bell?

Mathematical construction, abstraction, language, life, music, rhythm, all come together. I intend to learn, I dare, and I trust myself. Therefore, economics can also be learned.

During my years at Kabataş, it was as if all the teachers had agreed to teach us the same philosophy: enlightenment! They also complained about the shortcomings in education. Something must have gone wrong or they were unhappy with something. Maybe not every school provided the same level of education, but we understood what kind of philosophy we were actually educated with during our lives. So how did they all make common references to the same concepts?

Learning how to learn in basic education, rather than learning a profession, was actually enlightenment, but we were unaware of this at the time.

One thing I am sure of is that the teachers who gave us that education are psychologically devastated when they see today. These days were not in their educational ideal. I know that.

When examining Humboldt’s educational ideal, it is also possible to refer to the village institutes of Turkey. Village institutes were schools that prepared students for life in all aspects. I cannot go so far as to claim that there is a parallelism between Humboldt’s ideal and the educational philosophy in the village institutes. However, I can see that they are united in the desire and desire for enlightenment. What I have read about the village institutes so far tells me the importance of the unity of science and art. I can also see the exciting relationship between enlightenment and the village institutes.

People who can confidently embark on enlightenment, maturation, learning to learn, the intention and courage to learn, of course also know freedom. The qualities of the people who raise these people are so important and this job is so difficult. I have also observed the importance of Humboldt's search for emotional warmth, broad-mindedness and the ability to treat children from all classes equally in teachers.

Kabataş was like a village institute once. It was the school of Turkey, not the Ortaköy of Istanbul. We had boarding friends from Van, Hakkari, Erzurum, Bitlis. We learned a lot from being with them. We were poor, rich, villagers, and city dwellers together. That environment taught us to look at people as people. Those who stepped out of line were warned by the teachers.

I also understood in real life how emotionally intense it was when my grandmother, a primary school teacher, was teaching in the east and would take food from home to poor students and distribute it without anyone noticing. Whenever we would pass by a school together and see students running around in the schoolyard, tears would start to flow from her eyes. In the early years of the private lessons and systemic training craze (early 1970s), I heard her resent a parent who asked her what subjects her child should take private lessons in. She cried, saying, “Am I not enough now that she is talking about taking private lessons for her child?” Then she quit teaching.

It is impossible for me not to be impressed by Meliha Güvemli, who left her 40-odd years of teaching literature because she looked at her watch for the first time in her class to see when the recess bell would ring, and Emine Ertür, who devoted herself to teaching so much that she almost grabbed every child she saw on the street and tried to teach them to read and write, and who never left me without commenting on my handwriting.

Once upon a time, there were such schools and such teachers in Turkey.

Let's end the article with Einstein. Wilhelm von Humboldt's Bildungsideal suggests a holistic education. It has no ideal of educating people for whatever the current economic system is. What is important is enlightenment. Einstein wrote an article in 1949 titled "Why Socialism?" Towards the end of the article, he complains about something about the education system: that people are being educated in accordance with the goals of the capitalist system.